127. Question Time: Communists in Austria, the collapse of First Republic, and the political power of Ben and Jerry's

What role do corporations play in political activism? Could the local elections results push forward a general election? Are communists having a resurgence in Europe? Rory and Alastair answer these questions, as well as discussing their favourite museums, chauvinism in sport, Vice President Kamala Harris, and ageism in politics. Sign up to the free TRIP weekly newsletter: bit.ly/3zhYAIl TRIP Plus: Become a member of The Rest Is Politics Plus to support the podcast, enjoy ad-free listening to both TRIP and Leading, benefit from discount book prices on titles mentioned on the pod, join our Discord chatroom, and receive early access to live show tickets and Question Time episodes. Just head to therestispolitics.com to sign up. Instagram: @restispolitics Twitter: @RestIsPolitics Email: [email protected] Producers: Dom Johnson + Nicole Maslen Exec Producers: Tony Pastor + Jack Davenport Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:04Rory Stewart?

  This episode is brought to you by NordVPN.

• 0:06Alastair Campbell?

  And I must thank NordVPN because on my Grand European Tour with Fiona, I was away from the Hawthorns for West Bromwich against Burnley, but I managed to watch it. There you go.

• 0:19Rory Stewart?

  I actually had a NordVPN thank you. I was in the new Starbucks here in Creve and of course the thing flashed up saying this is an unsecured public network. And I was able to go to my VPN and it was a little reminder of something we often forget when we're in all those cafes and things, which is actually genuinely, people can do all kinds of weird cyber attacks and spying if you don't have a virtual private network when you're sitting in that Starbucks.

• 0:42Alastair Campbell?

  Well, I think, are you not really sort of proud of me that I managed to do this? Or should I say Fiona managed to do this?

• 0:49Rory Stewart?

  I'm incredibly proud of you. That's a tech transformation. So to get the best discount off your NordVPN plan, go to nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. That's nordvpn.com/restorspolitics. And the link is in the episode description.

• 1:07Speaker 02

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• 1:33Rory Stewart?

  Welcome to Rest of Politics Question Time with me, Rory Stewart.

• 1:36Alastair Campbell?

  And me, Alastair Campbell.

• 1:38Rory Stewart?

  Very good. Alistair, communists in Austria. I think you've been thinking a bit about Austria recently, haven't you? I don't know if you've been following, but the Communist Party has been making grounds in Austria recently. Is this something you've seen in other countries? Or is it a one-off? Any thoughts about Communist Party or Austria in general?

• 1:54Alastair Campbell?

  Well, this is interesting. It's a party called KPE, KPE plus, the Communist Party in Austria. And there was a election, state elections in Salzburg last Sunday, and they came fourth, which doesn't sound, you know, so what kind of thing, but they got 11.7% of the vote. And the other big story from it was that the far-right FPÖ made the second largest gains. And I just think it was interesting that we generally think of Austria as being a pretty right-wing country, and the communists did do well. Have I noticed it anywhere else? Not to that extent. No, I haven't, but it's quite interesting. So they came fourth.

• 2:38Alastair Campbell?

  The far-right came second with 25%, and they are making pretty steady gains at the moment. Now, it also means you could, they're just about as strong enough, if they want to do, to make a coalition, which I think that would be interesting, far-right communists in coalition. So that's still sort of working its way through, but I did think that was quite an important election.

• 3:00Rory Stewart?

  Very good. So here's another question from Yale University. Manix, who's a professor at Jackson School, Yale University. Was the result of the 2016 Brexit referendum an accident generated by an unlucky pile-on of crises? Or was Brexit likely to happen within a generation anyway? Given that the status quo ante, the UK as an EU member state gradually sidelined by the eurozone, is untenable, and the alternative, deeper integration and eventual euro membership, unacceptable. So just as a spoiler, Manix teaches a whole course on the European Union.

• 3:37Alastair Campbell?

  Why doesn't he know the answer then? Doesn't he know the answer?

• 3:41Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think his instinct is that Britain probably was in quite an uncomfortable position, having not joined the eurozone and with more pressures for deep integration, that its position on the margins would have put it ultimately in having to choose between more integration or some kind of Brexit. What do you feel about that?

• 3:56Alastair Campbell?

  I've just read a book by an economist called Russell Jones. It's called The Tyranny of Nostalgia.

• 4:04Alastair Campbell?

  And it's an analysis of the economic policy of every government since Ted Heath.

• 4:08Rory Stewart?

  Right.

• 4:09Alastair Campbell?

  And I did enjoy reading it. I'm not sure you'd enjoy it that much because he's quite nice about the Blair Brown government and he's absolutely scathing about the Cameron Osborne government in two respects. No, several respects, actually. One is he felt that Osborne, this is something that we've discussed with Osborne in a leading episode that we'll be putting out in a few weeks. He felt that Osborne was really driven by politics, not economics, and politicised the Treasury to a great degree. He felt austerity was a very, very political choice and it didn't secure the recovery and that's one of the reasons we're in a mess now. And the third thing is he thinks Brexit has been

• 4:49Alastair Campbell?

  an unmitigated disaster. And he thinks it was, as I do, something done to resolve political problems inside the Conservative Party rather than a genuine national need. So I still, I'm afraid, I'm of the view that the referendum did not have to happen. I know that David Cameron profoundly disagrees with that. I actually think that George Osborne agrees with that and he tried to persuade Cameron not to have it. Look, where we would be if we hadn't had the referendum, none of us know. Would the Tory party still be arguing about Europe? Yes, it probably would, but it is anyway. Would the country be economically stronger? I think it would. So listen, there were complicated factors behind the referendum, but the biggest answer to the question, why did we have the referendum, is because David Cameron decided to have it.

• 5:33Rory Stewart?

  Yeah. I do think, though, that Monix's point about the medium term is an interesting one. Many, many of my constituents in Cumbria, including people who voted Remain, had a vision that where Britain was with the European Union was fine, but they didn't want it to get any deeper. One of the things I'd hear again and again is, if we can just have an agreement that where we are with the EU is fine and we stop there and we don't go any further towards things that made people uncomfortable, which could be the Euro, could be the European Army discussions, etc. But of course, I think Monax's point is that Europe is a dynamic enterprise. It doesn't stay still and it's an enterprise which was driven by a desire for ever closer union.

• 6:17Rory Stewart?

  Now, that may not be fully realistic anymore because I think Europe has come through Brexit surprisingly strongly. I mean, it held together over Brexit, held together over Covid, held together over Ukraine.

• 6:30Alastair Campbell?

  Support for the EU in the European countries has broadly risen since Brexit rather than fallen.

• 6:36Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, and in many ways, Europe's performed much better than people anticipated in those three crises, but it's got some pretty significant challenges. I mean, one of them is what's happening with Poland and justice at the moment, how they're going to deal with Viktor Orban. And above all, and maybe we should discuss this at a later stage, the French presidency because it really matters if Le Pen becomes president of France because the president of France really defines foreign policy and the EU in a way that Georgia Maloney doesn't in Italy.

• 7:06Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, and especially with with Scholz perhaps not being as assertive in in those fields as as Merkel was. I watched a brilliant documentary on Merkel over the weekend, by the way. I think it's just called Merkel and it was on, was it on Netflix? Can't remember what it was on, but it was absolutely superb. A lot of it about her early life. Now, here's one from Tom Rory.

• 7:27Rory Stewart?

  Yep.

• 7:27Alastair Campbell?

  In light of the latest culture war battleground in the US over Bud Light teaming up with a trans social media influencer, could you see brands in the UK involving themselves in marketing campaigns around political issues? Do you know about this story?

• 7:41Rory Stewart?

  Yeah, well, tell us a bit about it. Go on, tell us about it.

• 7:44Alastair Campbell?

  Well, basically Bud Light teamed up with a well-known trans social media influencer for a marketing campaign and there's been a pretty big backlash against it, up to and including, according to my daughter Grace, who's in America at the moment, people kind of, you know, going around taking Bud bottles off and smashing them and not drinking them. They've seen a big drop in sales, their rivals have seen a rise in sales. So it just shows that it can cut both ways because I do, I have noticed. More brand activism around the place. I was at a sport industry awards dinner the other night, which I've been going to for years and years and years and years. I used to be a judge on it. It's a huge thing. It's like two, two thousand people inside that big conference centre in the centre of Battersea Park. All the kind of great

• 8:29Alastair Campbell?

  and the good of the sports industry are there. There's always a charity and the charity this year was their own, a Sport Together Fund, and the fund was asking all these people with quite a lot of money in the room to fund organisations which support refugees. And I noticed on the same day, this amazing, I don't know what I'd call it really, but it was from Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream, "Safe Roots For Refugees. Wherever we come from, we all have a right to feel safe." And I've read the whole thing. I'll send it to you. You should read it because it's actually one of the best briefing notes about the refugee issue I have actually ever read. It's almost, it's the sort of thing you'd expect from a political party or an NGO or a, I don't know. So that's Ben and Jerry's.

• 9:09Rory Stewart?

  Can I, can I come in on that and then bring, bring you back? Because you were going to talk, I think, also about Body Shop. But just, I mean, just for listeners, it's a fascinating story. Those particular brands, Body Shop, which have been very much against anti-animal testing. But Ben and Jerry's, I mean, they, they launched this amazing ice cream in 2018 called the Pecan Resist, which was an ice cream against Trump. They've done a lot on asylum seekers in Sweden. They closed all their operations in Israel-Palestine.

• 9:39Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, they called it sanctions. They've got a new brand though, haven't they? I think they're.

• 9:44Rory Stewart?

  Yep. They did defund the police. They pushed for the impeachment of Trump. So they're on the far edge of brand activism. And, and there's a reason for that. It works very well for those brands, partly because millennials, very, very much, you know, in all the surveys, well over half, feel that they're going to go with a brand more that has a strong activist narrative. And it allows you to get an enormous amount of free advertising and publicity because you're picked up by the major news outlets who then spread you around. But it can, as you say, also backfire. If you don't have it in your DNA from the beginning and you suddenly try to do it. The classic example was Pepsi Refresh. Which tried to rebrand itself with a 25 million community investment fund and

• 10:27Rory Stewart?

  found themselves losing $350 million in a year and Diet Coke shooting ahead of them in the rankings.

• 10:34Alastair Campbell?

  Well, and Disney are involved in this sort of massive row with Ron DeSantis, the Florida governor at the moment, because they were getting involved in the gay rights campaign. Your friend Airbnb, Rory.

• 10:46Rory Stewart?

  Yeah.

• 10:46Alastair Campbell?

  Just after Trump signed an order to close down America's borders to refugees, Airbnb aired an ad during the Super Bowl, which is not cheap. It was called We Accept, and the ad was just a montage of people of different nationalities along with the words, we believe no matter who you are, where you're from, who you love or who you worship, we all belong. The world is more beautiful the more you accept, which is kind of deliberately taking a kind of antithesis to something that Trump might say or do. And you mentioned The Body Shop. I did an event last week with The Body Shop, which was about this voter ID thing. You know, the fact that we're forcing people to take voter ID and the unfairness in the fact that young people.

• 11:29Rory Stewart?

  Was it also pushing for votes at 16 instead of 18?

• 11:31Alastair Campbell?

  And for votes at 16, which I think you and I disagree agreeably about.

• 11:35Rory Stewart?

  We do, and I think, though, I also wonder whether it doesn't help appeal to a particular group that they want to bring into their shops. I mean, the ethical sustainable brands is this enormous exploding industry. My wife, Shashana, works in this because a lot of the craftspeople we work with in Afghanistan and Syrian refugees in Jordan and others are producing ethical, sustainable products. And it's been growing 9%, 10% a year. You know, ethical fashion is now a 7 trillion industry, ethical food 132 billion. But on the other hand, with inflation taking off with energy prices rising, there have been some real setbacks. Organic food had a big setback last year.

• 12:17Alastair Campbell?

  Patagonia is another one that's sort of had social and political activism sort of into what you call its DNA. And I saw one of their campaigns at the bottom. And this is where they're using social media and all the kind of algorithmic stuff. Depending on where you live, you get a message at the bottom that says, not ask your MP, but it says, ask Bradford's MP to take action for warm homes, ask Bedford's MPs. So they're targeting you in your constituency and they're giving you a link that you can directly start to lobby MPs. So I think it is, I think it's something that is, that is picking up. But the Budweiser, the Bud Light story will perhaps alarm some of them. But as you say, I think it's about whether you're, whether people feel that it, that it's authentic.

• 13:02Rory Stewart?

  Museum recommendations. Angie Bolton, you recommend books to read. What museums would you recommend to visit? What gallery or exhibition stayed with you?

• 13:11Alastair Campbell?

  Jack Brel Museum, the Jack Brel Museum in Brussels, I love.

• 13:15Rory Stewart?

  Tell us about that. What's that museum about?

• 13:16Alastair Campbell?

  Well, it's quite, Jack Brel is my favourite musician of all time, a great Belgian singer. And there's a museum, quite a small museum, but you, you get his life, you get a lot of his music. And I think the other museum, which I strongly recommend people who ever, are ever driving down through France, the Charles de Gaulle Museum at Colombe de la Deux Eglises is beautifully done. Yeah, definitely worth a visit.

• 13:40Rory Stewart?

  Well, so my two, I'll start also with a French museum, the Musée Gimé in Paris, which is Asian art, the most extraordinary ground floor dedicated to particularly Khmer Cambodian Buddhas. And I was there just, just last week and you can follow the development of images of Buddha from Afghanistan, right the way through to Java and Indonesia, through India and China. It's, it's extraordinary. I also huge shout out to Vinderlander, which is a museum arranged around a Roman fort up on the Cumbrian, Northumbrian border, just below Hadrian's Wall. The Burley family, over 75 years, their academics traditionally at Newcastle University, worked with their students to excavate what was then a pretty obscure Roman fort and

• 14:25Rory Stewart?

  have discovered the most incredible things, including tablets with preserved Roman writing of people sending letters up and down the wall, inviting people to dinner parties. Busting oil and fish paste. And it's just beautifully done. There are whole walls of shoes, which you wouldn't have thought sounds very interesting, but when you've arranged probably seventy five Roman leather shoes in a case, it's just stunning. It's like going to fashion. And final one, I think, is the Victorian Albert Museum. Victorian Albert Museum really would drive people towards, I'd drive them towards the Japanese gallery. I love the Japanese gallery in there. And you can read about samurai swords.

• 15:05Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, I'd drive them to Tristram Hunt's office, given he runs the place. Just knock on Tristram's door and say, Alistair said I could come and have a cup of tea and you'd give me a personal tour.

• 15:14Rory Stewart?

  You can totally do that. And can I just a shout out for the for the Conservative governments that usually accused of only favouring their own political friends, that it was under a Conservative government that the wonderful Tristram Hunt, who was then a Labour MP, became the director of the Victorian Albert Museum.

• 15:29Alastair Campbell?

  And it was under a Labour government that free museum entry was introduced.

• 15:32Rory Stewart?

  Very good.

• 15:33Alastair Campbell?

  Which do you think was more significant for the many, not the few? Now, my final one is the National Football Museum, used to be in Preston, now in Manchester. Good to have these things in the north. And here, I'll make a pledge that when I die, if the National Football Museum wants the shirt that I wore when I played with Maradona, signed by Maradona and all the other players, they can have it. How about that?

• 15:56Rory Stewart?

  Oh, that's that's very kind of you, Alistair.

• 15:58Alastair Campbell?

  Isn't that beautiful?

• 16:00Rory Stewart?

  I thought you were going to offer them your entire Bodleian Library archive for a moment, but that

• 16:04Alastair Campbell?

  No, no, no, that wasn't that wasn't what we're still talking about.

• 16:07Rory Stewart?

  Right, Alistair, we've got a few more questions to come, so let's just take a quick break.

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• 18:34Alastair Campbell?

  Okay Rory, here's one for you. Harrison, should we be paying more attention to what's happening in the United States with First Republic Bank and JP Morgan?

• 18:41Rory Stewart?

  Yes, absolutely. So again, for listeners, this is the second largest bank ever to fail in the United States. It went down after nearly $100 billion had been sunk in trying to save it. This is a very sensitive issue to talk about. We were criticized for talking about bank failures on previous podcasts because obviously people in the banking industry are extremely conscious of the fact that on social media and on podcasts like this, if we are loose with our language, we can actually encourage bank runs. But the fundamental driver of all these failures, and remember, we've had Credit Suisse, we've had Silicon Valley Bank, and now we've had this bank, is to do with rising interest

• 19:21Rory Stewart?

  rates and them being caught off balance by the drop in the value of the bonds that they had before, which were at lower interest rates. So the question is, is this going to go further? And that, as everybody keeps saying with the email in, we need to be very cautious talking about, but it's certainly something that's worth having a conversation with your financial advisor about and thinking about, because there are some systemic issues. And if interest rates remain high, and if there isn't a significant recovery in the European and American economies, you know, there are things to be concerned about.

• 19:55Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah. And Joe Biden went out yesterday and did a fairly calming doorstep at piece to camera at the White House. And just on Joe Biden, Rory, we've got a few questions this week about ageism. We're both being accused of ageism. Joe Butler, is ageism the last accepted stereotype? Personally, I think Joe Biden is a class act who's been a calm ship through rough waters. It's exactly what the world needed. But what are the literal downsides to his age? What would a younger man do that he can't? James Woods, please would you consider whether you have a problem with ageism on your podcast? Last week, Alastair said, is he losing it? Well, he's into his 90s, referring to Murdoch, and you've both repeatedly questioned Biden money for president, often citing age alone

• 20:39Alastair Campbell?

  as a concern. Now, before you answer that, Rory, I, we must put into the newsletter the clip of Joe Biden in the White House last week at a state banquet with the South Korean president, Yoon Suk-yol. Did you see it? I sent it to you.

• 20:56Rory Stewart?

  No, I haven't seen it.

• 20:57Alastair Campbell?

  How many, what percentage of the stuff I sent you, do you actually look at?

• 21:00Rory Stewart?

  I think I look at most of it.

• 21:02Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well. If he's on a general WhatsApp group, you just think, oh, he's ranting again, I'll ignore it. Because this one was Joe Biden was explaining to the audience and the South Korean president was having it explained to him through an interpreter, which I presume means he doesn't speak fluent English, that he, Yoon Suk Yol, is a massive Don McLean fan. And Joe Biden had in his hand a guitar signed by Don McLean. And the South Korean president sang American Pie, and he sang it really, really, really well. Sadly, he stopped before the chorus here. I wanted Joe Biden to get involved in the chorus. And what he showed, though, is I think this thing about Biden, he's got real empathy.

• 21:46Alastair Campbell?

  And if you do see it, there's such warmth coming through it. Right, I'll plug that, we'll put it in the notes, but what about Biden being too old?

• 21:52Rory Stewart?

  I mean, it is a, it is a serious problem. I mean, whatever you think about it, 67% of Americans in the CNN poll say that Biden does not have the stamina and sharpness to serve effectively as the president. And this has gone up 16 points since Biden started campaigning four years ago. If, if you watch him carefully, I mean, it is very politicized because, of course, the Republicans keep up this attack of sleepy Joe, but it's not difficult for them to find extraordinary examples of him tripping on steps, getting his words confused. Now, some of this has been part of his general issue all along, you know, confusing the black and tans with the all blacks.

• 22:33Rory Stewart?

  But it is a job that requires the most astonishing mental acuity and endurance. People age in that job. And you sensed with Ronald Reagan and his second term that it was an issue, his age. And I think it was a real help to Kennedy and Obama that they were very young when they did those jobs. So now, remember, his major potential opponent...

• 22:59Rory Stewart?

  Trump is the same age.

• 23:01Alastair Campbell?

  Slightly younger.

• 23:03Rory Stewart?

  But I think the same concerns should apply to him too.

• 23:07Alastair Campbell?

  You may be aware that he is currently in our country. He is in Scotland. He arrived yesterday. Yeah, Trump's gone to see, he's up in Aberdinshire, looking at his golf course. And it was utterly hideous to have him back on our news screens. He came, his plane arrived and he gets off the plane. He comes down, reporter shouts a question at him. He said, it's great to be home, great to be home. He said, his mother came from Lewis. And then he said, my mother, she loved the Queen. And it's great that I got to know the Queen. She became a good friend of mine.

• 23:39Rory Stewart?

  It's a bit like your mother who loved the Queen too. This is, and a father from the Isles.

• 23:45Alastair Campbell?

  Yeah, but my mother, I wouldn't go around and say my mother became a friend of the Queen. And then the reporter, to his credit, did point out that he hadn't been invited to the coronation. Unlike other people we could mention, Rory.

• 23:58Rory Stewart?

  President Biden's wife, you're obviously referring to.

• 24:02Alastair Campbell?

  You're determined, you're determined not, you're determined not to comment on this. You're going to be seen on the TV. It's just going to, it's just going to generate even more interest in your presence there. I think, what are you going to wear?

• 24:14Alastair Campbell?

  What are you going to wear?

• 24:16Rory Stewart?

  I'm avoiding your questions as usual. I can't recall hearing anything about Kamala over the last three years. And the Lord which surrounded her election appears to have vanished. I'm sure there was a feeling at the time that her election to Vice President would surely be followed by her succession to President four years hence. What have I missed about her tenure? Has Kamala, in your opinion, had a good Vice Presidency so far? So for UK listeners, I mean, this will be very, very familiar to US listeners. But for UK listeners, the deal there is absolutely, when she became Vice President, people were incredibly excited. Looked like this was the first woman of colour who was likely to become the next president. People felt at the time that President Biden was unlikely to run again. And the first woman, absolutely. Since then, she's had a pretty torrid time.

• 25:00Rory Stewart?

  Partly she was given some very, very difficult jobs by Biden, given immigration and border security and voter reform, which were almost impossible. Partly, she's had some very high profile resignations from her team, been accused of bullying, but her net popularity ratings now at 28% are lower than almost any vice president's, lower than Cheney. Any thoughts on Kamala Harris?

• 25:23Alastair Campbell?

  It was interesting, on the back of our leading interview with Hillary Clinton, we had lots of our listeners saying, "Oh, God, can't she run again?" And also, lots of people saying, "Wouldn't it be great if she could step in and run as Biden's running mate?" I think Kamala Harris has had a, you say torrid, I don't think it's been torrid so much as just not being very noticed, not being very central to the picture. I mean, when, if you go through, I think we can overstate the importance of number twos in these situations. If you think of Trump and Pence, Pence didn't really have a sense, you didn't have a sense of Pence really until the end, when he turned against Trump. Reagan and Dan Quayle, Dan Quayle was seen as a complete sort

• 26:06Alastair Campbell?

  of numpty. But I think, I think that once Biden had decided he was going to run again, then she became less relevant to his presidency. But it was very interesting to me that in the video with which he announced his, his candidacy a second time around, she features a lot, I mean, like a lot. And I wonder whether that was to keep her calm, to sort of, I don't know whether she was just sort of, he was making, bigging her up a bit, or whether he actually thinks that on the road, she can bring him some benefit as a campaigner. But I think you, I think you'd have to say that she, I don't have a sense of what she's been trying to achieve as vice president.

• 26:48Alastair Campbell?

  Now, when Biden was number two to Obama, he was the kind of, you know, he was the wise old guy, he was there, he had big foreign policy experience, you know, he was the guy that Obama would send off around the world when Hillary was busy somewhere else. And, you know, I think it was, there was a clear role there, which is why he emerged then to become the successor. I don't think she's really been clear about the role.

• 27:09Rory Stewart?

  It's, it's an incredibly difficult role, though, isn't it? LBJ famously, Lyndon Johnson, took the role as Kennedy's vice president. And when somebody said to him, "Why on earth have you done that?" I mean, at the time, he was famously in this book by Robert Caro, which anybody who's interested in restless politics should read. It's called Master of the Senate, who's dominating US politics from the Senate and decided to be vice president.

• 27:30Alastair Campbell?

  So, thanks for plugging another book in the week that my book is published, Roy. Thanks for that. I remember, I remember that in September.

• 27:38Rory Stewart?

  But what can I do? Can I, can I just remind people? The punchline though is how we Jay's asked, why does he become vice president? And he says, because he'd studied the historical records and one in three vice presidents go on to be president. And sure enough, Kennedy's then assassinated.

• 27:53Alastair Campbell?

  You're not suggesting a plot, you're not, you're not joining the JFK conspiracy theories.

• 27:57Rory Stewart?

  Norman Mailer book about conspiracies to kill Kennedy. Yeah.

• 28:01Alastair Campbell?

  Now, what about local elections? Andrew Sims, if the Tories lose a thousand or almost a thousand councillors this week, does that make an early general election more or less likely? JP Cherrington, inevitably all parties will spin local election results. There'll be plenty of expectation management. Post May the 4th, will parties alter their approach? Or are they locked into the themes and tactics for a brutal, long general election campaign?

• 28:25Rory Stewart?

  Well, local elections can be very, very damaging. I mean, one of the things that was the final undoing of Theresa May was catastrophic losses in the European and then local elections in, in May of 2019. And that really was the moment at which it became clear that she was going to have to go. So I think it's, um, I think never underestimate the impact because so many of the members of the local parties increasingly are local councillors. These parties are very small and they're dominated by local councillors. And when the local councillors lose their seats and blame the central government for it, that creates a huge grassroots problem for party management.

• 29:01Alastair Campbell?

  The expectations game is interesting because the, the elections that are being run this week are those that you're referring to. So they're coming from a very, the Conservatives are coming from a very, very low base on this one. And yet I saw Oliver Dowden being interviewed. And I, I suspect this is where the question has come from because he said they expected to lose about a thousand seats. And as he said it, I thought, oh, okay, that probably means they're expected to lose about 500. And he's decided to say a thousand, and then when it comes in at about six or 700, they'll say, well, we did a lot better than people were expecting. And it's a game that, do you remember Kenneth Baker? When he was running the Tory party campaign machine and, and he did a brilliant job.

• 29:45Alastair Campbell?

  One year by getting the entire media to focus only on Westminster and Wandsworth. And they did a lot better than expect. They went around saying, oh, it's going to be disaster. We're losing Westminster. We're losing Wandsworth. That's where you need to be sending all the media. And of course, they won Westminster and they won Wandsworth. And people said, what an amazing win for the Tories. We're around the country that have been decimated. So that's the game that's being played. I think the I think the local elections are very, very difficult to call because, you know, we've talked about this a lot. I think the the country is really fed up with the Conservatives. I think the country does want a change, but they're still, I think, not hearing enough and seeing enough about what the change will be in the form of a Labour government. And and and it is hard in a local

• 30:27Alastair Campbell?

  election campaign to to sort of, you know, fight it, fight on local issues, but get judged on a national level. But this this will be a very, very interesting week. And and I think we're my my sense is the Tories are going to do badly. But I don't think it'll be a thousand losses. I think that's that is all part of Tory expectation management.

• 30:46Rory Stewart?

  Well, there's quite quite a good comments by Anthony Selden, who's just written this book on Boris Johnson, which I'm not plugging because this week we should be concentrating above all on, but what can I do? But it but in an article in The Guardian, he does say about Starmer that he feels that that this is a moment that really should be calling for strategic, but we're getting tactical, should be calling for the kind of major key, but we're getting the minor key. Now, because we've been accused of ageism, I want to wrap up the the podcast with a question arranged around a 94 year old man making the news, 94 year old man who, you know, comes from the left like you, but maybe who you don't always see eye to eye on. What does Alistair think of Noam Chomsky's comments about spectator

• 31:30Rory Stewart?

  sports encouraging chauvinistic obedience? I see a lot of that within football to the point of toxicity. That's from Tio, Debbie Alistair. Chauvinistic obedience.

• 31:42Alastair Campbell?

  Is it Chomsky? Is it Chomsky who sees that in football or Tio?

• 31:46Rory Stewart?

  Chomsky sees it, but Tio agrees with him.

• 31:48Alastair Campbell?

  And Chomsky is 94, but going to English football matches, yeah?

• 31:52Rory Stewart?

  Well, he's certainly commenting on spectator sports.

• 31:54Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, well, did you see, this takes us neatly back to the first subject of the main podcast, the coronation. Did you see the clip I sent to you of Celtic fans in the game against Rangers?

• 32:08Rory Stewart?

  You did. I did see that. I did see that. I didn't want to see it because it's not comfortably sitting with my worldview.

• 32:15Alastair Campbell?

  No. So there was a situation where, I don't know if I can really say what the Celtic fans were saying, but they were suggesting that the coronation was put into a part of the body where I believe the sun is unable to shine. And they were like all singing it. So was that toxic chauvinism? I think it was a bit of sort of political fun. I've noticed this year, obviously it's been an amazing year to follow.

• 32:39Rory Stewart?

  Chauvinistic obedience, this is what, that's what I think I'm sometimes suffering from on this podcast. Do you think you're imposing your chauvinistic obedience on me?

• 32:48Alastair Campbell?

  What is, I don't know what chauvinistic obedience is. It's like.

• 32:51Rory Stewart?

  You've got to read more Chomsky. I've always thought you'd read enough Chomsky.

• 32:54Alastair Campbell?

  They were being disobedient. The Celtic fans were being disobedient. I have noticed this year, not in the grounds, but away from the grounds, I've noticed a bit more aggro going on and a bit more kind of stuff going on. I wonder if there is a little bit of a return of some of the old violent ways of the past. I love football culture. I do love it. I was watching the Naples game the other day and sadly it didn't come off, but they had an aerial shot of the stadium. If Naples won their game on Sunday, they were going to win the title. They're going to win the title anyway because they're so far ahead. And this aerial shot was showing all the people who were not at the game, who were coming towards the stadium to celebrate what they thought was going to be this amazing

• 33:39Alastair Campbell?

  win. And I love that sort of stuff. I love the cultural side of it, but I hate it when it gets into kind of. Nastiness and racism and, you know, xenophobia and homophobia and all the other stuff. I think it's got better in some ways, but I think away from the grounds, I've noticed a little bit of a return of it all.

• 33:57Rory Stewart?

  Well, I think this goes back to Chomsky's fundamental ideas of thought control. And he's, he's concerned that putting people in large stadiums reinforces, but

• 34:06Alastair Campbell?

  Okay, what, what, what do you, what do you think he would think about us all having to swear allegiance? Would he see that as a, as a form of thought?

• 34:11Rory Stewart?

  I don't think Chomsky's really much in favor of that now. I can't, can't see old Noam getting ready into, getting, getting ready into the British monarchy. No, I don't really see that happening. Um, anyway, with a, with a final tribute to, to Noam Chomsky, with both his sort of, um, his, his extraordinary acuity on Linguistics is Hughes, his occasional-

• 34:29Alastair Campbell?

  Don't, don't plug his books. Don't plug his books.

• 34:31Rory Stewart?

  Occasionally, I, I disagree with him profoundly. Occasionally, I think he's monstrously peculiar and naive, but certainly a formidable figure at 94. And Kissinger just coming up to his 100th birthday, who we can-

• 34:41Alastair Campbell?

  I know.

• 34:42Rory Stewart?

  -discuss on another pod. Right, there we are. Thank you all very much.

• 34:44Alastair Campbell?

  All the best.

• 34:45Rory Stewart?

  Bye bye.

• 34:45Alastair Campbell?

  Take care. Bye.

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